How Does Your Workout Playlist Affect Your Fitness?

Music and working out have been paired together for what seems like an eternity. When most of us head out to the gym, go for a run or do any other form of fitness, we often grab our headphones and plug in. There’s a good reason for this; music changes our mood through triggering memories and connections stored in the brain, releasing chemicals throughout the body and stimulating certain emotions.

But have you ever considered how the music you listen to, or specifically your playlist, affects your fitness? Since adapting a healthy lifestyle requires commitment in all you do, let’s take a look at how music might be affecting our exercise and path to be healthy.

Motivation

Using music while working out has countless benefits, but one of them is to help get and stay motivated. It allows you to tune out distractions from the outside world so that you can push yourself to do your best, and, of course, to try to have some fun in the meantime.

However, everyone has different tastes in music, and there are some genres better suited for certain workouts. It is important to find music that triggers this motivation and use it to help you obtain the results you want. For example, you may be into house music and find it motivates you to work out more effectively. However, someone else might get the same burst of energy from listening to heavy metal.

But there may be genres you would never consider listening to outside of working out that actually have a great effect on you. Don’t be afraid to try new types of music as you never know when one will give you that extra push.

It’s important to understand, though, that you shouldn’t simply throw a bunch of songs into a “workout playlist” just because you like them. The songs have to induce a certain emotional response in you that makes exercising feel more enjoyable. So, listening to slow, ballad-like music such as Céline Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” might not be the most beneficial choice, no matter how much you like the song.

Focus

Just as it is important to understand how music affects our mood and motivation, we need to also look at how it alters our focus. Essentially, you want music to produce motivation and energy, but not to be the main focus of your attention. This is why the way in which you construct your playlist is so important.

Many people make use of popular streaming services such as Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music and Deezer. They have pre-made playlists for those who are less picky, but premium services allow you to select songs and build your own list. You can also use apps such as FIT Radio, which integrate DJ-curated playlists that maintain a regular beat.

What’s great about having a killer playlist for your workout is that it helps you maintain focus. By having a long, uninterrupted playlist you can start at the beginning of your workout, you won’t have to worry about choosing songs and getting distracted on your phone. The music will simply be there in the background, pushing you to keep going.

It’s also important that you protect your activity while using the internet to create or stream playlists. Most streaming services ask you to make a profile with personal information, and paid services will have access to credit card information. If you don’t take the necessary steps to obtain a secure connection, you’ll be vulnerable to hackers, especially while on the go or at the gym.

Improvement

Your playlist, along with results tracking, can actually go a long way towards helping you diagnose problems in your workout routines and improve.

Devices such as the FitBit, or even your smartphone, can track and record metrics including heart rate, calories burned, distance traveled and much more. Also, data is presented as a graph that incorporates time. If you compare this data with the playlist you listen to, you should be able to see how different songs affect your mood. Maybe you had a great mile during your run where you were really pushing yourself and excelling. If this is the case, simply look back to your playlist, determine which song you were listening to and try to find more like it.

You can also turn this around and generate a playlist around your workout. If you know there is a tough part in the middle of your routine you usually struggle through, try to load up songs in the middle of your playlist you know will motivate and push you.

Overall, we can see that music is much more than a fun distraction while working out. What we listen to and how can greatly affect our mood and focus, and it can also give us a chance to improve on areas where we might be struggling. Remember, though, that music is just a tool. Being committed to your fitness, working hard and staying positive are most important. But if you learn how music affects these things, you can apply it to your routine to drive better results.How does your playlist affect your workout performance? Leave a reply in the comments section below.

Caroline is a fitness and wellness coach. She enjoys blogging about innovative ways to enhance overall workout performance and also likes listening to steady beat house music while working out, as she finds it has a positive impact on her exercise sessions.